Under the “Iran deal”, signed in 2015, Iran agreed to limit its nuclear programme. In return the US, Britain, France and Germany agreed to lift sanctions that hit Iran’s oil and banking industries.

But Trump has repeatedly attacked the deal—and could scrap it. Under the deal, the US president has to signal every so often whether they are still committed to it. The deadline for Trump to do that is this Saturday.

He also wrote for the New York Times newspaper and appeared on right wing news programme Fox and Friends, which Trump is known to watch.

But Bolton and other advisers close to Trump support a return to confrontation with Iran.

Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani said on Saturday that Trump was “committed to regime change” in Iran. And on Sunday the Guardian newspaper revealed that Trump aides hired a private Israeli spy firm to find dirt on the authors of the deal.

Trump’s threat to scrap the deal shows that, weeks after the airstrikes on Syria, the threat of a deadly confrontation between rival powers in the Middle East hasn’t gone away.

If Trump scraps the deal, it could be a step closer to a war between Israel and Iran that would have devastating consequences for ordinary people across the region.

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